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                                        Miss Tea Party Girl :)

                                     Huggin' Big Brother :)


Hope You enjoyed!

Further adventures in the medical world

Well, the hives are gone.  Our pediatrician felt that Julia's reaction was not to the giardia medicine, but the augmentin that she was on for her ear infection.  So we did a little test by giving Julia a small amount of giardia medicine, and guess what, no hives.  It seems that she is allergic to the penicilin in the anti biotic.  We are now forging ahead with treating the giardia and h-pylori.  Wow, who knew this part of the adjustment for Julia would be so challenging.

Julia's transition continues to go well. She eats like crazy.  She has gained three pounds according to the doctor's scale.  We think she is growing in length as well.  All of the Onsies I bought for her are now popping everytime we pick her.  Time to make the switch to undershirts.

Caleb has some good non-hive pictures that he will be posting later.

Please continue to pray for all of the families who are working so hard on their dossiers to go get their children.  There are some families who are all ready to go and just waiting for their child's country to give them the green light.  These situations are so heart breaking.

If you haven't had a chance, please check out a blog that our three oldest kids have started with a good friend of theirs.  They are hoping to advocate for the children who are still waiting for their forever families.
http://www.speaking4thesilent.blogspot.com/.

Pictures to follow.

Mostly Medical Update

Julia continues to adjust to her new life quite well, even if it is throwing her some curve balls.  She tested positive for giardia and h-pylori.  No surprises there, until we started the medication for it.  The poor little girl broke out in hives everywhere.  We stopped the medicine and are waiting to hear from the pediatrician as to which medication we should try next.  Once we get the giardia taken care of, we will treat the h-pylori.  We saw the eye doctor today.  It amazes me that he can determine a perscription when the patient is twisting around in her mom's lap and swatting him away with her hand.  However, the doctor was able to get a look at her eyes, once I held her arms down.  No surprise here either, Julia needs glasses.  I was so impressed that the doctor knew all about the special frames that are made for children with Ds and he told me to have the optometrist's office help me order them.

Our next appointment will be with a heart specialist.  The pediatrician has no immediate concerns, but we want to have Julia's heart checked out just to be sure everything is o.k.  After the heart appointment we will see the ENT doctor.  In the mean time, I will be working on the paper work to request services for her from our local school district.

I'll have Caleb post some pictures of Julia once the hives have disappeared.  She doesn't seem to notice them, but she just looks so uncomfortable.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of some of Julia's siblings having fun in the snow this past weekend.

Our New Slideshow!

Hey Everybody!  I am SO excited to introduce my brand new slide show for our trip to Julia! This has some of the best pictures of Julia from the album, as well as some exclusive footage from homecoming! Enjoy!


Our Journey to Julia from Caleb Lococo on Vimeo.

And as promised....

New Pictures!

I'm back with a bajillion of 'em! I just love taking pictures of her!. She is definitely starting to like the picture taking thing, and some of the best pictures are the ones she doesn't realize you're taking :D We just love our little cupcake.

Antibiotics are definitely working in the cold department. As you can see from the pictures. She's looking really great.

                                ("Oh, Addisu, that's so funny. I think these Americans are crazy too.")

One Week Home & Her First Visit to the Doctor

Julia has been home with us exactly a week today.  I think we are doing pretty well with getting into our new routine as a family of eight.  All the school aged kids started back to school this week, some at home and our one daughter in public school and things are going well even with all the adjustments being made.  Julia loves spending time with all of her brothers and sisters.  She is practicing her walking a lot by holding one of the kids hands.  Her main goal is to take them from the family room to the dining room where her high chair is located.  This girl loves to eat.  So the kids spend most of their time redirecting her and trying to get her interested in some thing else.

Julia is still adjusting to the time change.  She is convinced that the best time to get up in the morning is 5 a.m. Ugh!  We hope this trend passes soon. 

I made an appointment with our family pediatrician a week before Julia came home, so that she could be checked out and we could start working on any medical needs she might have.  Well, what I thought was going to be a "well" visit turned into a sick visit.  The poor little girl woke up from her nap in Wednesday with super goopy eyes and a bad runny nose.  It was a good thing I had made this appointment, because Julia has an ear infection and conjunctivitis in both eyes.  Amazingly, she is already responding well to the drops the doctor prescribed and she will be on oral antibiotics for 10 days.

We also put together a plan to have her see an eye specialist and a heart specialist just to look her over.  This will be the year of the "Doctor Appointments".

Most days have been really enjoyable and Julia is adjusting really well to her new life.  We have had some periods where Julia is very upset and seems overwhelmed.  We wish so badly at those times that we could communicate with her and she could tell us what she is thinking and feeling.  Since this is not the case, we do our best to console her and help her through the rough patch.

One thing that really seems to make her happy and relaxed is bath time.  She goes crazy in the water.  We can't wait to get her in the pool this summer.

Thanks for checking in with us.  It has been a busy week and posting on the blog sort of took a back seat to all the activities.

I'll have Tom or Caleb post some pictures soon.  Bye for now.

Photos of Julia at home and in the Ukraine

As we adjust to life at home, here is the complete photo essay on Julia's journey home, organized into more manageable albums so you can pick the phase or topic that interests you.

Albums in order of interest (as they relate to Miss Julia of course):  The names are fairly self explanatory
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/JuliaAtHome#   - This one will continue to grow over the next few months as we settle into life at home
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/JuliaComingHome# - The princess on the road towards home
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/JuliaOrphanage# - pictures of our visits to the orphanage - both trips
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/GreenForestSeleniyGuy# - the orphanage and villages around where she lived
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/AdoptionFriends# - some of the wonderful people we met along the way
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/Kharkov# - City of Julia's birth, and our time there - former Soviet capital of the Ukraine
http://picasaweb.google.com/tomljmj/Kyiv# - Current/historic capital of Ukraine - Kyiv (Kiev in former days)

There will be more updates and captioning as we get time, but wanted you to have access to these.

New Year, New Life

Hey Everybody! Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a blessed end of the holiday season for 2010. The three musketeers are safely back home, and all went quite smoothly. Most of the time Julia simply sat on Dad's lap or played nicely, and she also slept for about 4 hours on our longest flight (which was 8 hours). Mom, the four kids, and my Grandma met us with smiles and lots of tears at the airport, and Julia slept the whole drive home (about 90 minutes).

This morning Julia was up bright and early, and so were we. Playing, loving, cuddling and adjusting occupied most of our morning. Julia adjusted to her new schedule very well, and we even got in a two hour nap!

(In case you're still wanting more, just click here for several related albums, from first departure to arrival home)

We are very happy to all be home with each other for New Year's together. We are so happy to have Julia here with us. Our hearts will never forget those other little orphans we had the privilege of getting to meet and interact with.

While I was over in Julia's country, I watched all three Lord of the Rings movies (yes, literally, all three, from start to finish). I could watch those endlessly forever, they are just so good. While all three obviously made big $$$ and got great critical buzz, none quite beat Return of the King. It won 11 Oscars, and rightfully so. It ended the trilogy so darn well. No matter what emotional state I'm in, the end always makes me cry. But there's one scene before the tear fest  I always admire. We have come to the end of the road. Our four main hobbits (Frodo Sam, Merry, and Pippin) have endured the many trials to arrive back at their little town of the Shire, with the peace of knowing the outside world has been restored to peace as well. As they sit in their little Pub sipping cups of ale, they sit in silent admiration of each other and what they accomplished in the year the journey took. The mood has been very much the same here. We are all in amazement over what occurred in a mere six months of our lives that will so drastically change everything. But we couldn't be happier.

It has been a pleasure blogging here. while this is certainly not my last post here, I will be posting a lot back at my own blog ( www.hisworld-caleb.blogspot.com, AKA Swimming AGAINST the Tide ), so feel free to stop by for plenty more orphan advocacy posts,  more pictures of Princess Julia, and lots of other stuff.

Have a Happy, loving and blessed 2011. Always remember, there is Hope for Every Child.